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Live Steam

OCTOBER 14, 2010
The last thing I remeber was lighting the small boiler on tail of this handmade scale model. I was set up on Staten Island's Dorp Beach about eight am on a beautiful autumnal morning .The bay glistening like a mirror in the cool morning sun, the rest of what happened is sort of a blur. After ignition there was a loud hiss and bang, then the dam thing just took off. This photo was taken very close to my head as the zeppelin blasted by. Dangerously close to its designer, tripping the motion dector on the camera set up on a tri pod on the bays shoreline. Lucky for me I had a friend in a small powerboat; sitting just off shore for the test and he had a cell phone, get it! It took him fifteen minutes, traveling at full throttle to follow the bluish white vapor trail straight to Great Kills Beach where the small steamer was found floating and un damaged, We figure it took the steam zeppelin about four minutes to travel the five miles before running out of keroscene, amazing.
More and more I am sort of seeing form in dimensions rather then just flat. Try to have a piece of paper in my pocket at all times, when the wheels of the minds eye start turning.
Actually I am not being completely honest here, this model is a working prototype for a large-scale idea to construct a nose cone. Still fooling around with my now twenty-year passion for human power, the devil appears at 19.50 miles per hour
Trying to think logically in demensions and create forms
Top secret project here, can not get any government funding for this project, the government is simply not interest in low speed aerodynamics, So I tinker away in quiet in my modest shop, using my own money to continue this endever. Much fun!
Going on the road heading to the Society of Illustrators in late November still organizing all my toys, will need lots of boxes.
© 2024 Chris Spollen